Vayera: The Akedah and the Aisle

With all the back and forth in the blogosphere and elsewhere re: the ostensible “shidduch crisis”, people seem to forget a basic underpinning of halachic marriage which might make the prospect more frightening if they ever considered the implications.

To wit:

Every Jewish woman who enters into a halachic marriage is making a commitment involving a level of mesiras nefesh that can NEVER be equaled by a male counterpart. 

In other words: every woman who is ever mekudeshes undergoes her own personal akedah. 

Every. 

One. 

Every. 

Time.

Some lawyers consider it legally unethical to ever advise a woman client to enter into the kind of contractual relationship entailed in an Orthodox marriage because there is never an option for her voluntary exit.   This indicates that any Jewish woman who has consented to kiddushin has thereby expressed that she places notions of Kedusha and Torah above anything having to do with “freedom” or “Western values”.   For all complaints from all quarters about the pernicious influence of “modernity” upon Yiddishkeit, the fact that kiddushin is practiced and that women enter into it willingly points to the fact that in some cases said “modernity” will never become a complete  “ikkar”.

There are hints to this level of mesiras nefesh in the classic literature.   One that I find pertinent in light of this parsha is the Talmudic statement [Kesuvos 72b] when discussing possible reasons for summary divorce:  “im ken, lo henachta bas le’Avraham Avinu!”  [e.g. our father Abraham has no daughters if you hold them to [x] standard].  Not by accident do Chazal realize what a nisayon there is in every marriage on her part—and bring the one who was tested through the Akedah to make the point.

Beyond that—and if you want to accuse me of actually suggesting this be done, fine, because we all know nothing of the sort will ever come close to happening on any level—if women realized what they were being asked to give up, what would keep them from staging a grand “walkout” and declaring [Bava Basra 60b]: “we ought by rights to bind ourselves not to marry and beget children, and the seed of Abraham our father would come to an end of itself”?  The fact that said seed perpetuates—and is traced back to Avraham, particularly--indicates, again, the mesiras nefesh involved.

That is why the still-maligned halachic pre-nup is actually grossly undervalued—on RELIGIOUS terms. 

Because if people knew what mesiras nefesh was entailed on the part of every woman who underwent erusin, they’d be tripping over themselves to find a male equivalent that was that automatic.

Because if there really was a salient “concern that introducing and focusing on the possible dissolution of a marriage when it is just beginning is not conducive to the health of the marriage” there would never have been a kesuva.

[And if one will claim that the implication of divorce/death is “peripheral” to the kesuva—should I mention Kesuvos 11a: “…she has a Kesuvah…lest it be light in her husband's eyes to divorce her”?  Or maybe I should mention Rashi on Kesuvos 82b, where he says “lo rotzos lehinasei”—women were NOT MARRYING because the terms of the Kesuva [e.g. in regard to the nature of the assets attached to it] were unfavorable for the woman—and Chazal acted to fix it?  Twice?  Hardly “peripheral”, then, to “focus on the possible dissolution of a marriage when it is just beginning”.]

Because if you think that it’s “unromantic” to sign a pre-nup—actually, it might be the most “romantic” gesture a guy can make in the context of a halachic marriage.  In effect he says: I realize exactly what you’re doing, and I want to join you to whatever degree I can by making a similar commitment, even though it can never be the complete halachic equivalent.  The prenup might probably the most salient way to express that sentiment.

Because, even if you can back up your claim that there are “entirely defensible reasons” to “[not] embrace the prenuptual approach”, you may not realize what a disservice you do to the very “nashim tzidkanios” you end up chaining to the pedestals you continually place them on.

If “nashim tzidkanios” are going to bring the geulah—let’s hope it’s as simple a process as the act of kiddushin which for all intents and purposes involves an akedah.

Every.

Time.

[P.S.  After running this by an otherwise sympathetic Rabbi friend, he mentioned that the kesuva itself is hardly "romantic".  Then I remembered--

Maybe it is:

"From this forward, all my property, even the shirt on my back, shall be mortgaged and liened for the payment of this kesuva, dowry and additional sum, whether during my lifetime or thereafter"...

 "Even the shirt on my back"...sounds pretty romantic, no?

"Whether during my lifetime or thereafter"...still think divorce/death is “peripheral” to the kesuva?]

Matos--"Just One Look..."

The Gemara [Shabbos 64a] relates that the soldiers who came back from the revenge battle against the Midianites offered the gold and jewelry they captured in battle as a penitential tribute, because, even though Moshe initially suspected them of illicit relations [precisely because they offered the booty under their own volition], they said “’We did not do a sinful action, but perhaps we had sinful thoughts’…they taught in the House of R’ Yishmael: the soldiers needed [to bring the Kelim for] an atonement for getting pleasure from seeing forbidden women.”

This is one of the myriad Talmudic sources detailing restrictions regarding ogling—or, more likely, gazing that would fall far short of ogling.

Sefarim do exist that actually explicate “hilchos re’iyah” in great detail.  Suffice it to say it’s not one of my strong points.  It reminds me of the story a former shana bet colleague told me about the time he and a chavrusa, having been able to make the commitment to be “shomer negiah” and stick to it [more or less, at least for a measureable period of time], wanted to go the next step and try to be “shomer re’iyah”.   According to him, that might have lasted a few minutes.

[There is also guardyoureyes.com, which involves a “battle” that didn’t really exist yet in my Yeshiva days.  [But I date myself.]  Should I mention the irony of a website that helps one combat the vagaries of the Web?  I just did?]

This vignette is also usually a jumping-off point to most summer-period mussar shmuessen about watching what you—well, watch.   But it might not present as the paradigm of self-control it’s held up to be when you take a closer look.

This battle was the quid pro quo for Avel Shitim, the joint Moabite-Midianite turning-out of almost their entire flower of young womanhood to seduce Bnei Yisrael into Pe’or-worship and concomitant oblivion [cf. Sanhedrin 106a].  [Not-so-side note: the mass executions taking place during the incident were for the Pe’or worship, not the illicit liaisons; the only exception was Zimri, and there were other reasons for that.] 

There are midrashic indicators that soldiers weren’t too far removed by degree from the precipitating factors.  Rashi on 31:16 via Sifri relates that the soldiers actually recognized which particular woman had snared which particular Israelite offender: "this is the one through which so-and-so had his downfall."  [Since, as the aforementioned Sanhedrin 106a relates how Bilaam planned out the gradual seduction technique through business relationships, personal knowledge of at least who some of the participants were may not have been all that farfetched.] 

Tosfos Shabbat 64a [s.v. “midei hirhur mi yatzanu”] actually indicates one more interesting tidbit: the halacha of the “yefat to’ar”/captive woman was already known to the soldiers, but a reminder was needed that it applied to “the one you liked [“ve’chashakta”], but not her friend”. [I’m unaware  of anything indicating whether anyone actually made use of the loophole, but this Tosfos indicates that at least there was some consideration on the part of the soldier which would have been halachically legitimate, insofar as the boundary as to where it would not have been was delineated.]

So, not to necessarily downplay “lo sasuru”, but there were plenty of cues to hirhur here which made the situation other than a case of “re’iyah be’alma”.  Hardly paradigmatic, then.

Beyond that, however, is the extension that this might take to another realm that is the complete inversion of this case.  I can’t locate where I saw this, but a [well-meaning?] advocate of more sex-segregation in religious activity justified his position because, as he put it, he might be having a “spiritual moment”, which is then ruined by a female either singing or giving a dvar Torah.

To said complainant: if your “spiritual moments” are a] all about your having them and b] they are so fragile that they dissipate when a woman might simultaneously engage in something [at least] equally legitimately spiritual in the time and place where you are—then you probably have to reassess either what you call “spiritual”, your actual “spirituality”, or both.

This notion has actually been addressed in the contemporary literature.  In his “Understanding Tzniut”, Rav Yehuda Herz Henkin takes issue with a lot of what’s written in Rav Pesach Eliyahu Falk’s “Oz Vehadar Levusha” [I’ve heard that at least one BT women’s seminar tells their students to particularly NOT use that sefer as their tznius arbiter].   Or, as Rav Henkin puts it, it’s a sefer “as much about ideology and outlook as [it] is about halacha.”

Most germane to this issue—and the aforementioned complainant—is where R’ Henkin addresses R’ Falk’s approvingly relating the “rebbetzin who never displayed her vast knowledge…she would listen quietly and closely as if the words were new.  She never hinted that she was fully acquainted with what was being quoted.”  R’ Henkin: “An alternative—that she should share her knowledge with others and deliver a d’var Torah—is not considered.  Apparently, that would be displaying special skills and a lack of tzniut.”

And, the coup-de-grace: “There is a danger here of losing sight of the real basics of modesty—not to mention being so concerned about not thinking about women that one can think of nothing else.”

Res ipsa loquitor.

Side Note: The AGT Kid With The Yarmulke

I wish Rabbi Fink was right.

In the tradition of the Berditchever, he tried to find a “silver lining”, a limmud z’chus to whatever extent possible for the kippah-clad 6^th grader who appeared on America’s Got Talent telling dirty jokes about his parents’ sex life while his parents shepped nachas onstage.

[I haven’t watched it.  I’m afraid if I do, the authorities will come looking for me; I’d look kind of the way Robin Thicke did mid-twerk with Miley, as if he was waiting to be arrested for statutory offenses.]

The reason I wish Rabbi Fink was right is because I’m a nogea b’davar, big time.  Leave alone my Saw You At Sinai resume which indicates that “I plan on: Definitely Owning A TV—Definitely Going Out To Movies—Definitely Watching Movies At Home”.   My SYAS essay details how I “embrace popular culture”.  [That might explain why I’m still single.  But maybe not.]

I play in cover bands.  Female-fronted.  Have been for years.  I’m not even going to publish our set list.  I’ve been known to say that I’m very makpid on kol isha: I try to hear as many women singing as possible.  [And yes, I generally keep my kippah on while onstage, or at least have my head covered.]

So while I definitely agree that, as Rabbi Fink put it, “we need more work on our image of being normal than our image of being religious”, this particular incident will swing the pendulum in the other direction; it’s given the right-wing crowd and/or anyone who eschews TV and the like a bigger pischon peh against MO than, to paraphrase Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, “reams of Yated Ne’eman”.  

This makes even ME think twice about how steeped in pop culture I am.  [I’ve drawn some lines, occasionally asked some shailos from various LOR’s [and been actually pleasantly surprised by some of the answers I’ve gotten.]  But I admittedly haven’t viewed my immersion in pop culture through a purely halachik lens.]  So actually—I’m pretty ticked off at the kid’s parents; they’ve made it harder for the rest of us, especially those really involved in the arts who actually care.

However, maybe that’s where the silver lining Rabbi Fink looked for is.

First--at least judging from the facebook universe, most of the commentary was decidedly negative.  The term “Chilul Hashem” was bandied about—by MO practitioners who don’t necessarily have smicha.  Even R’ Yaakov Menken didn’t use the term in his Cross-Currents piece on the incident.  [Maybe he thought it was so obvious that it didn’t bear mentioning, but maybe not.]  This indicates that the MO universe is definitely NOT comfortable with this, and that something needs to be done.

Second--while we now recognize the need to draw lines somewhere, the involvement of Orthodox Jews as Orthodox Jews in the arts—performing and otherwise—isn’t going away.  We had the case of Ophir Ben-Sheetrit, suspended from her HS for singing in public; we have Orthodox dancers and dance teachers dealing with varying levels of communal tensions; and from my experience, many more kippah-wearing musicians in various beis mishtaos [some doing it for a living, some not].  When I did it in 1991 it was still a novelty, and somewhat controversial [especially since I was a Shana Bet guy].  It’s less so now.  There are going to have to be conversations and parameters, but maybe if the realization hasn’t yet sunk in that this is a viable option as far as Orthodox participation beyond mere spectating, maybe it will now.   There was a time when religious authorities tried to dissuade their charges from entering certain [actually, a majority of] professions, for various reasons [“Jewish boys/girls don’t do that”].   Some felt compelled to choose between the said professions and religion, and religion lost.   Then Orthodoxy adjusted--someone figured out: you can do both.  Same thing here.

Third--see some of the comments on facebook and elsewhere about “levels” of chilul hashem:  “Well which is worse, the MO kid with the dirty mouth, or the Chassid/black hatter who [insert malfeasance here]?”  In theory, that might be beside the point, with one important caveat: the widespread discomfort and [with the possible exception of me] lack of cognitive dissonance in the widespread criticism indicates that, unlike some of our more right wing cohorts, there seems to be less wagon-circling.   No one is saying that this is being used to attack our way of life.  [Except me.  And I’m admittedly an interested party.]

One more point: R’ Menken opined this happened because deviancy has been defined down.  I would—and have—argued—the opposite: sometimes the bar is raised too high, and there is a backlash.   This can—and has—happened in too many areas to detail, but maybe some people want to define themselves in contradistinction to perceived extremism, and this is what results.

So maybe Rabbi Fink was right after all.

Korach: "We're All Individuals!!!"

I’ve written before about how Korach, under the guise of egalitarian protestation, used his own prophetic vision to advance his personal position to get what he thought was rightfully his at the expense of those who were deluded enough to follow him and the democratic pretensions he actually didn’t believe in, or care enough to even give credence to.

Even if he himself didn’t believe what he was preaching, “kol ha’edah kulam kedoshim” being the catchphrase employed, it might be interesting to compare this case of Biblical democratic pretension to another: the story of migdal bavel.

The catchphrase there, as pointed out by the Netziv, was devarim achadim.  In HaEmek Davar Bereishis 11:4, he asserts that Tower-era Babylon prefigured the Iron Curtain in its legislation: “..if some would leave they might adopt different thoughts…[] so they saw to it that no one left their enclave…[] anyone who deviated from devarim achadim would be sentenced to burning…”  Judy Klistner refers to this as “coercive conformity”.

We see a lot of this, particularly on the Left and in academia, to the point that former Mayor Michael Boomberg admonished a graduation audience at Harvard about the disturbing trend of "liberals silencing voices "'deemed politically objectionable.'"   On the Right, it didn’t start with “You’re either with us or against us”, but the recent primary-season brouhahas between Tea Party and Chamber of Commerce candidates—and the insistence in some Republican enclaves that the party dedicate itself to a unitary religious vision—indicate for the tendencies for groupthink in those quarters.

That being in the word at large, how does this “vision” translate to the Jewish world?

One can note the difference between the respective Divine paybacks:  Korach dies. The dor haflagah doesn’t.   Why is Korach’s punishment so much more draconian?

He used religion to do it.  He not only held himself up as the leading light of egalitarianism, he held himself up as that of religious egalitarianism.  Despite the fact that he had ascended to his then-already lofty communal position because of his DNA [as Moshe pointed out to him], and his assertions of “kulam kedoshim”, he also intimated he would make changes to mitzvos, both bein adam lamakom [the “talis she’kulo techeiles”] and l’chavero [his rantings about tithing as an onerous system of taxation were a surefire way to score political points with the public].

There are many ways conformity can be introduced into religious practice, from all corners.   There’s no reason to point them out [although one might say that because there are so many of them—as Professor Lawrence Kaplan might say, “Which Da’as Torah?”—conformity is an impossibility].  But if someone tried to use “kulam kedoshim” as a justification…

Nisan/Pesach: Permission for Revolution

With the current “Arab spring” series of uprisings in the Middle East, including a very prominent one in, of all places, Eretz Mitzrayim itself, it seems that questions of freedom and, to quote our esteemed President, “legitimacy to rule” couldn’t be better timed.

Recently I came across a copy of the Satmarer’s Vayoel Moshe [in the possession of a friend, who was, of all things, a Lubavitcher. Talk about thinking/reading outside your “box”]. I had never actually read any of it, but from an array of various secondary sources I was vaguely familiar with the gist of the Satmarer’s main point, to wit, that the “three shevuos” derived from Shir HaShirim and discussed in the last perek of Kesubos serve as the basis for an absolute issur vis-à-vis the re-creation of a Jewish polity before bias hamoshiach, and which consequently form the backbone of Satmar’s, and others’, unyielding opposition to Zionism.

[I was also familiar—also vaguely—with arguments against the Satmarer, from the Meshech Chochma’s observation that the Balfour Declaration served as a sign that the shevuos were matir [even though the Meshech Chochma himself had a very dim view of Zionism and Zionists], from other arguments that the three shevuos were aggadic in nature and never meant to be applied in any halachic framework.]

in any case, political quietism and “shatdlanus” were certainly the order of the day until at least sometime in the mid-19th century [also a heyday of “revolutions”, starting in 1848 and never really stopping afterward]. Which raises an interesting question: is “revolution” a “goyishe” concept?

We can start with one common thread between what happened in Egypt then and what happened in Egypt now: someone spoke truth to power. In the case of the Exodus, Moshe and Aharon were speaking on behalf of a whole nation [not to mention G-d]; in the more contemporary case, a large portion of the Egyptian citizenry did the job. Not to raise Tahrir square to a prophetic madrega, but it definitely qualified as a legitimate affliction of the comfortable, regardless of the eventual political outcome in Cairo. That kind of revolution does not have to be labeled as “goyish”.

The interesting thing about the “revolution” of yitzias mitzraim, however, is that it had this in common with the Zionist “revolution”: both of them involved the Jews basically asking for permission to revolt! Moshe basically asked Pharaoh [at least] ten times to “Let my people go”; he never said “We’re leaving” [though he did insist, as the posuk in Bo [Shmos 10:9] relates, that Pharaoh would have to give permission for EVERYONE to leave]. Similarly, the original [secular, anyway] Zionists asked “nicely” if they could have their land back—twice: once at the time of the Balfour Declaration, and the other time at the Lake Success UN vote in 1947—and were answered in the affirmative both times [though both the British and the UN tried—or are still trying—to take it back in both cases]. The Satmarer would have said that it wasn’t our place to even ask, but as shown, not everyone agrees.

[Also, as interesting technical aside, before the makas bechoros, G-d gave the Jews the mitzvah of “haChodesh haZeh”, which according to the first Rashi in the Torah, should be the firstposuk in the Torah because it is the first mitzvah in the Torah given to the Jews as a nation. Once G-d gave that commandment, the Jews could no longer be classified as a rebellious slave minority; they were now state actors and a legitimate political entity [albeit still landless]. This was their [lhavdil] Declaration of Independence and possibly the preamble to their Constitution.]

Is “asking for permission” any way to sustain a revolution? Might depend how you define a “revolution”. The Russian anarcho-revolutionaries who both preceded and were contemporaries of Lenin were advocates of what almost might be termed “revolution lishma”—that is, violent uprisings for their own sake with the ultimate aim to upend society and leave nothing in its wake. Needless to say Judaism has no truck with this type of revolution.

A less sanguine, but still rather sanguine, view of revolution was articulated by Thomas Jefferson, who thought that violence in the course of revolutionary activity was not necessarily a bad thing. With all due respect Jefferson, several successful and long lasting revolutions succeeded without a shot being fired, notably much of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that raised the Iron Curtain from most of Central Europe and Asia [though the century and a half lead in from the time of the original Communist revolutions certainly exercised a heavy cost in lives]. In a similar vein, while the Israeli and Indian states were not created without some [considerable] spilling of blood, the fact that stable democracies emerged from the smoke of various wars indicates that the aforementioned Jeffersonian “ideal” is a sometimes inevitable byproduct, but by no means a necessary or desirable one.

Are the Arab revolts engaged in asking for permission? Some of the Arab revolts are actually aping the more positive aspects of revolt; witness the non-violence on the part of the masses in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain [despite the fact that in all these cases there has been often brutal official reprisals]. In the one exception to the current cases, the fact that the international community has given help [albeit limited] to the armed Libyan rebels indicates that, somewhere, someone believed that permission had to be granted from someone, whether the EU or UN or US; they practically begged for it and got it.

There are many Biblical and Talmudic bon mots that seem to militate against any kind of serious anti-governmental agitation [ones that don’t involve prophets admonishing wayward kings at G-d’s direct behest, anyway]. One is Ecclesiastes 8:4--4 Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him, “What are you doing?” Which is exactly what’s happening now. Also is the Pirkei Avos’ [3:2] admonition “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if not for fear of it, each man would swallow his fellow alive”…and, rightfully, is the fear that anarchy will follow in areas where there is no tradition of a truly civil society to fill a power vacuum [especially in Yemen and Libya]. Plus, the last thing the Arabs—even the well-meaning ones who actually want democracy and the rule of law—want to hear is ‘Do things the way the Jews [should] do them”. Plus, there is the more obvious question on everyone’s mind is, of course, is this good for the Jews/Israel? Already there are rumblings about treaty abrogations and siding with Gazans from some Egyptian notables, plus there is the ever-looming spectre of Islamist takeovers everywhere there is even a momentary power vacuum.

Still, it seems that the idea of just revolutions has some basis—however limited—within a classical Judaic framework, and we can only hope that, in this season of the first Jewish revolution, that framework is followed.